How we all marvel at those true examples of people who in extraordinary times, do extraordinary things. These are often times of war, great poverty, natural disasters, and closest to home, pandemics. These are individuals who put the life and safety of others ahead of their own. And in doing so, others live. Happy endings happen.

News programs show these stories sometimes, the feel good segment at the end of the evening news, after all the pandemic deaths, politicized safety protocols, and sad and dead elders gone forever, alone at the end. It’s a sad, damn time right now, people. It’s brutally hard not to forget that there’s some good in the world, and recall all the good when so many are sad, unemployed, sick, dead, and “languishing,” the new word for how many of us feel.

I’m not a psychologist or social worker or anyone who would be considered “qualified” to help with ‘how to move past your languishing.’ This blog is not nor has it ever claimed to be any type of self-help center as some blogs are that promise to help women and others to feel better, look better, be a better FILL IN THE BLANK. But I do know that if the languishing doesn’t at least have some commercial breaks of happiness, joy or just a few laughs that it can turn into something that gets harder and harder to turn as temporary languishing turns into full blown depression or worse.

There are lots of articles in major papers and segments on tv about women and others drinking more or smoking more weed during the pandemic. Even a year ago a report noted that prescriptions of anti-anxiety medications increased by 34% between mid-February and mid-March 2020 in the states. Other countries around the world are seeing the same thing. Doctors are trying to help patients with pharmaceuticals, but of course, most would never tell their patients to smoke some weed, put a few cannabis drops in their morning coffee, or chew a few cannabis gummies, despite the fact that the manmade drugs are addictive in most cases, but cannabis is not.

I’m not trying to be a pusher for weed here. But trying to figure out the medical professions’ addiction to doling out addictive drugs — which have positive proof of being addictive — and discouraging cannabis. They would say, “There’s not enough research to know if it is effective.” Ok, well fuck the first hand knowledge of pot smokers for the past fifty years who have used recreational pot to either get high, e.g., using it as you would a glass of wine, or to help with anxiety, depression, pain management or illness management, like some people do for seizure disorders (like I do). So-called vaunted “science,” the same people that brought you the opioid crisis, tell you to stay away from cannabis because they haven’t studied it in the way that THEY say gives it the seal of approval. Fuck your experience, that’s meaningless. Only they know.

Same old paternalistic shit that everyone railed and rallied against in the ’60s is here to stay I guess. So it’s, here’s this manmade chemical with extreme side-effects, like, oh, maybe you’ll commit suicide if you take this anti-depressant, but gosh, the risk is worth it when weighed against not taking it. But stay away from pot, because we haven’t tested it, even though cannabis has few side-effects, except maybe a pot hangover the next morning if you used a lot the night before.

Is cannabis risk free? Of course not. If someone drinks and uses weed in whatever form, it can be dangerous. If someone drives or operates machinery, it can be dangerous. But not like alcohol when that is abused. Stoners don’t generally beat their wives and girlfriends like mean drunks do. They might still be an asshole, but likely not violent. Alcohol is far more dangerous than weed. But our society condones it and it is socially acceptable. You might ask why.

Campaigns by the federal government put weed in the same category as heroin. That’s like putting aspirin in the same category as oxycodone. It’s simply fucking stupid. It’s a conspiracy theory, over-hyped bullshit.

These days it seems we have been programmed into thinking that we have to lock-step with whatever Big Daddy government tells us is right. But if the last several years have not proven that we’re on our own and should do what our own personal wisdom and experience tells us is right, then I don’t know what to tell you. I trust my own judgment and experience as valid. I’m the only one who knows how I feel when and how I’ve felt over the last decades of using cannabis off and on. I know my limits. I know when I need a break. It doesn’t hurt my productivity, especially because I only use sativa not indica, which is a sleepier form of cannabis, for most; and it tamps down my seizures.

So what’s the damn point here? It is that we shouldn’t let the media or the medical profession tell us we have a problem when we don’t. And we need to watch them because we’ll all be on Ativan or one of its cousins, rather than having a few glasses of wine or a few puffs on a joint at night. Media love a trend. The pandemic has given a new panoply of trends that have kept the media busy. Before you know it, we’re told that because we’re drinking more, there’s a big fucking problem. But is there?

Look at yourself. You’ve lived in your body for a long time. If you’re not kidding yourself, then you are capable of judging whether you have a problem, or whether you just need some help right now. Ladies, men have never, ever known how our bodies feel or react or do anything else that our magnificence does. Men have pretty much gotten EVERYTHING wrong. Doctors randomly removed women’s ovaries for any reason in days of yore, such as interpreting a woman as “over-wrought”, treating post-partum depression (the nuclear approach), or responding to a wife who was depressed over her husband’s slam-bam-thankyou-ma’am approach to sex, during which an orgasm was farther away then the sun.

Oh, and by the way, push back on this as much as you want. But know that I don’t personally care because I know myself. I am a woman and step aside with your know-it-all bullshit that has harmed women and people of color since the beginning of the medical profession. And now that cannabis is legal in my state and the states around me, by law, I’m chill dudes and dudettes.

Reefer madness is a hoax, from the same people that brought you The Big Election Lie of 2020 and the Insurrection of 2021.

Put a few cannabis drops in your coffee and muse on that this wonderful Sunday morning. Now that’s dope. Peace out.

From Lady Proverbs, somewhere on the Oregon Coast.

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